Fired Giants coach 'at peace' with benching Eli Manning
Giants coach Ben McAdoo died on the hill last season by benching Eli Manning in a late-season game, giving a start to Geno Smith that broke a streak Manning had of beginning the game under center for every game in which he was healthy stretching all the way back to 2004.
And from the football coaching afterlife, McAdoo isn’t backing down from his decision.
Writing for Peter King’s new “Football Morning in America” column, McAdoo led off the column’s “What I Learned” section and said he is “at peace” with his attempt to get a look at the Giants’ potential quarterbacks of the future rather than their quarterback of 210 consecutive starts in the past.
He was fired that very same week and interim coach Steve Spagnuolo re-installed Manning as the starter for the season’s last four games.
McAdoo began his piece, of course, by reminding everyone how lucky he was to even get a chance to coach professional football in the first place.
“I’m the son of a coal miner from southwestern Pennsylvania, and growing up, I thought I’d probably be a coal miner too. But I ascended in the football business to be the head coach of the New York Football Giants! I’m one of the most fortunate people in the world,” McAdoo said.
McAdoo also pointed out that he didn’t make the decision to bench Manning on his own; after all, with guys like Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, and friends tearing up the college ranks in the 2017 season, at some point it was obvious that the Giants would need to know whether to draft Manning’s replacement now or take their chances waiting for Manning to retire.
That the Giants took running back Saquon Barkley with the second overall pick speaks to how the franchise thinks that decision should have gone down, but McAdoo, and indirectly Manning, argued the other side fairly convincingly.
Said McAdoo of the conversation before the game against the Raiders where he crossed the Rubicon, “At the time, we were 2-9, beat up, and I told Eli we wanted to see the other quarterbacks on the roster — including our promising rookie, Davis Webb. I was not ending Eli’s career with the Giants; I was making sure we knew what we had behind him with a high draft choice prior to a big quarterback draft. I gave him the option to start the games to keep his streak alive. I understand why he said no, and he was a true pro about it.”
McAdoo also believes — and at age 41 with an 11-win season in 2016 to point to as a sign that he can win ballgames as head coach, he’s probably right — that he’ll get a chance to coach again.
The Manning debacle taught him a few lessons, and he made those clear as well.
Referring to his often fractious relationship with star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., McAdoo said, “I learned I need to handle players, and work with players, better. Take Odell Beckham Jr. I needed to be better for him personally, as a coordinator and head coach. I was too busy trying to scheme ways to get him the ball, especially early in my time in New York, that I didn’t step back and see the big picture the way I should have.”
McAdoo also found that he quite enjoys the grind of NFL coaching, that lifestyle so often questioned by advocates of work-life balance as the occupation of single-minded madmen spending every waking minute of their lives scheming up ways to win a children’s game.
The coach, quoting Andrew Jackson, said “I was born for the storm; calm does not suit me.”
In a shoe commercial from a few years back, Michael Jordan once said about basketball that “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.”
For McAdoo, the lessons learned from a quarterback, a fanbase, and a dreadful 2-10 stretch that cost him his job have him at peace with the failure; success is just a matter of getting himself another shot.
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